Persistence of Energy
by Quatre Winner
Summary: Sam and Dean investigate a house. It's just a normal hunt, right? Well, Ion's not a normal spirit. Abyss spoilers.


I blame Umi no Kanshisha for this. Her fic "Bonds of Brotherhood" apparently has several references to Supernatural that I didn't know about until she mentioned it. At any rate, I wanted to cross Supernatural and Abyss because of her, so blame her for this. If Ion's OOC, keep in mind that he's sort of dead, so yeah.

I don't own anything. I wish I didn't own my head.

* * *

The Victorian-era manor was dark and creepy, a chill that had nothing to do with the snow outside it seeping into the air. It was as if the very life was being strangled from the atmosphere around the large, decrepit building, and the absence of the usual nighttime noise only seemed to intensify the effect. The only sounds that escaped the oppression were those of the wind in the naked trees, carrying nothing but the scent of moldy earth and rotten leaves. Overall it was not a place a casual passerby would dare venture if they had any other choice.

Sam and Dean Winchester would never dare to call themselves casual passers-by. They came and went as they pleased, sure, but usually with specific intents. This night, their destination was that house.

"All right, Dean, you know the story behind the place?" the taller of the two brothers asked, shaking brown hair out of pale eyes and regarding their target solemnly.

"Something about a voice being heard on nights of the full moon, right? A couple of kids have gone in and come out like zombies." The other man hefted his shotgun, a look of displeasure plastered across his face. "If this is anything like that insane asylum I'm out of here."

Sam grinned at his brother's expense, even if the incident in question hadn't been particularly pleasant for him, either. "Right. Neighbors claim that a child's voice is heard in the basement and a light can be seen on the night of the full moon. Kids who go in come out with total amnesia. It's like their entire minds have been wiped, forcing the parents to raise their kids from scratch."

"Uh-huh. Can't say I'd mind forgetting some of the crap we've done, but let's not get too comfy. We go in, see what clues we can find, and get out." Dean started up the path to the front door, Sam behind him with his own gun at the ready. "Why are we going in on the full moon?"

"If it's an intelligent spirit, maybe we can ask it to leave?" Sam offered hopefully. "If anyone's in t here, we have to keep them safe until we can get them out."

They advanced through the halls in silence, working together with a practiced routine, checking every door as they passed for signs of the inevitable idiot that would wander into a haunted house. They got lucky as they got to the basement door: so far they seemed to be the only one in the house.

The moon filtered through a few forlorn curtains, bathing the door in a dirty silver glow. As if on cue the silence was shattered, a young male voice reciting words that made no sense. The voice spoke of lights of the sacred flame and miner's towns, things that Sam or Dean had ever heard of in local mythology. The manor wasn't even near any mines.

The brothers glanced at each other and nodded, advancing down the stairs with Dean in the lead. The entire basement was suffused in a golden glow, and in the middle of it was the source of the voice. It was a child, like they'd thought, no more than thirteen if Sam were to judge. He had pale green hair (green?) left long at the front but cropped short at the back, an odd headdress keeping the strands out of pale green eyes. He was dressed in an elegantly embroidered white and green robe-like garment, white tights completing the ensemble. He stared straight ahead, not even registering the two men that had taken up positions on either side of him (but not within the other's line of fire).

"Excuse me," Sam began, not pointing his weapon at the boy – yet. "I'm Sam, this is Dean. We're here to help you if we can. Can you tell us your name?"

The boy stopped speaking, glancing at Sam with oddly glowing green eyes. Molten fire danced within the pale orbs, staring into the other with uncomfortable clarity. "My name? I have none, only what I stole from another. I could give you that one if you'd like."

"Any name would be fine," Sam smiled.

"Then I was called Ion when I was alive. I wasn't the first Ion, but I was him. I was born only to appease one man's desire to satisfy the Score. If there were no Ion, there would be no Score. That's why I came into being." The child looked at Dean and frowned. "You have a Score as well."

"Ah –" Dean began, but the child cut him off.

"The Score isn't set in stone. It is only what can be, not what will be." Ion raised his hand, pointing it at Dean. "I will free you from your Score."

"Wait!" Sam shouted, but Dean had already reacted. A gunshot rang through the enclosed basement, nearly deafening both men, and Ion dissolved into mist. Sam raised his gun and swung around, looking for any sign that the boy would return mad. "Dean, he was talking to us. That means he's intelligent. Maybe we can convince him to move on without violence."

"He was gonna wipe my mind!" Dean retorted. "No thanks."

"You wish to be bound by prophecy?" Ion's voice asked. The brothers whirled around to see that Ion had reappeared in the doorway leading from the basement. "It is not a pleasant future. My score came true, after all – the Fon Master died. Ion died, and then I was Ion. And I died too."

"But why do you wipe people's minds?" Sam asked. He had his gun pointed at Ion's feet, but was ready to bring it up the instant Ion became violent again.

"Because, that is the only way to defeat the Score," the spirit stated. "Only those without ties to the past were able to get around the score. Luke had no memory and he survived Akzeriuth, where he was predicted to die. Replicas are the only way to get away from the Score, but this world no longer has replicas. So I do the best I can, resetting those I must to a state where the Score can no longer affect them." The spirit looked sad at this remark.

"Ion, how long have you been dead?" Sam wanted to know. In his searching of historical archives he'd never heard of a boy named Ion dying in this area. There had been other boys, but none of them even matched Ion's description. How many people actually had green hair, after all?

That caused the spirit to blink. "How long… it is long since this world came into being. Before the Ice Age, before the dinosaurs, millennia before that. The continents had drifted apart, then smashed together again, then drifted apart once more. That is how long I've been here. A volcano used to sit here in eons past."

Both men had to blink, taking in Ion's words. During his speech he hadn't shown any signs of deception.

"That's impossible," Dean said at last. "A spirit's tied to its physical remains. If you'd been here that long, your remains should have gone to dust long ago."

"A body, you mean?" Ion asked, and he was suddenly amused. "I was a replica, Dean. I was composed of seventh fonons, solidified atoms brought forth from the atmosphere itself. When I died my fonons returned to where they belonged. I had no remains. My spirit is tied to Lorelei. As long as he exists, so shall I."

Sam and Dean traded looks. "And where is Lorelei?" Sam wanted to know.

Ion shrugged. "I have not seen him in ages. The elemental spirits come and go as they please, and sometimes they visit us."

Us. That meant there was more than one kind of spirit like Ion. Sam bit back a despairing sigh.

"All right, Ion. You're a smart kid. Can't we come to some kind of agreement? Mind wiping kids isn't a good way to get a good reputation, after all, and we can't let you keep doing it." Dean hefted his shotgun but no longer had it pointed at the spirit.

"But the Score –" Ion began to protest.

"That Score of yours won't do much. This is the first we've heard of it, anyway," Dean informed him. "And what we don't know, we can't mess up. There's this thing called free will, Ion. Let's give that a chance, huh?"

Ion thought that over, rubbing his chin thoughtfully. "Indeed… if Luke hadn't blindly followed… if the populace never knew about their Scores…"

"So can you stop mindwiping random people?" Sam asked hopefully.

Ion nodded. "Yes. I now know I was in error. However, it's been so long since I'd last seen humans…"

"You went crazy," Dean said bluntly. "That's not the first time we've seen that. Normally happy folk die, they discover they can do all sorts of nifty things, the power goes to their head. It happens."

Ion looked around his basement prison, lost in thought. "I've been stuck here for millennia upon millennia. If I could get out, see the world for what it is now…" His green eyes were narrowed in thought, no longer lit from within from that odd golden glow.

"Spirits usually stick around where they die," Sam noted. "But you're not the usual spirit. I think you should be able to go wherever you please."

Ion smiled, and the act lit up his face such that he hardly looked like the same boy who had threatened Dean only moments ago.

That was how Sam and Dean went from a ghost-hunting duo to a ghost –hunting trio. It seemed that Ion had decided that following the brothers around was the best way to see the world, even if it was only around the continental US. But at least they managed to find that Daath place Ion talked about, even if it was purely by accident. With Ion around Sam seemed to have suddenly become a random hole magnet. But if that random hole led several miles underground and into a ruined town that coincidentally was out of the way, unknown to anyone else, and large enough for a small army of Hunters…

Well, Sam and Dean had had worse partners on hunts.


End file.
